Sports were always a safe spot growing up, a place where I could go and forget about all the worries of school and life and just play. Every time I stepped on the ice, it was like clearing my head, giving myself time to practice, compete and just hang out with my friends.
So tell me why, on a random day in February in the year 2026, I open my phone to see a mass shooting at an ice rink in Rhode Island during a high school hockey team’s senior night. Let that sink in.
A mass shooting at a hockey team’s senior night. I don’t know how much more disturbing it could get and it simply needs to stop.
A night that was supposed to be celebratory, ruined. A place where kids are supposed to have fun and enjoy something most have probably done their whole lives, ruined. What else needs to happen for this violence to stop?
As someone whose brother is currently a high school senior that played the last game of his high school career on the same night as the horrific events, I don’t even have words to express how I’m feeling right now. Fearful? Angry? Upset?
Officials say the altercation was believed to be the result of a family dispute, but why does it even need to get to that point? What solution is a gun supposed to bring to any dispute?
What possesses a person in broad daylight, in a public place, to shoot multiple people and kill his own son and ex-wife?
Not only did the individual have two guns on them, including a Sig Sauer P226 and a Glock, but police further found weapons at a storage unit in Maine that is linked to the individual, according to NBC Boston.
Now, the first question that crosses my mind is: why? Why does any individual need this many weapons in their name?
Before people run to say “self-protection,” there should be no reason this individual should have felt the need to carry a gun to a high school hockey game to begin with.
Not to mention, this is Rhode Island’s second mass shooting in the last two months, the other being the shooting at Brown University, which resulted in the death of two students and nine others were injured.
As curious as I was, I immediately opened X to find the video recorded on a livestream of the game. While the video doesn’t show the exact altercation, it does show the various gunshots fired off, ringing through the rink as every athlete and coach froze, made my heart sink.
How must everyone in that arena feel? Not to mention the athletes and coaches?
Hockey is unique from many other sports in that you’re playing inside a structure that is completely enclosed. One can’t simply run away from danger. And that’s probably what frightened me the most.
What if the door to the rink was jammed and the shooter turned to the ice?
These kids had no choice but to skate as fast as they could to a door and hope they could get out of the enclosed rink.
On Feb. 20, high school hockey games resumed in Rhode Island, while the arena remains closed to the public, as of publication. Not only do these two teams have to continue on with their seasons and lives with what they lived through, but so does every other athlete in neighboring towns.
When tragedy happens in the hockey community, it affects all, even those thousands of miles away. This should never be the answer; no one should have to experience this.
